Troubleshooting Inclusion: From Placement to Participation

Non-Attorney Education Advocate and Inclusion Specialist Karen Ford Cull shares how families can break down barriers to meaningful inclusion and help students with IEPs learn alongside their peers. From writing stronger IEP goals to using accommodations, behavior supports, and practical advocacy strategies, you’ll walk away with tools to support true access in general education.

Watch the full video above, listen to our conversation in this episode of the Undivided Voices podcast, or check out a quick recap of the highlights here.

Full event transcript:

Hi everyone. Welcome to undivided live. I'm Lindsay Crain, and I had the content and community teams here at undivided. And for my visual description, I'm a female with a short brown Bob, dark frame glasses, wearing a black blazer over a black shirt with the undivided logo in bright green. And I am sitting also in a green office with bookcases to my right. Undivided is a digital platform and service that supports families raising neurodivergent and disabled children. If this is your first time joining us for an undivided live, welcome. We're so happy to have you here. We help families navigate the complex systems that our kids rely on, like public benefits, private insurance and the educational system. These systems are supposed to support our kids in living healthy, productive, inclusive lives and education is the foundation for all of it. So why is it so hard to get it right? Idea isn't just about placement. It guarantees access to education in the least restrictive environment with meaningful support. Access is the starting point. Learning is the objective, and belonging should be the outcome. But in practice, many families experience something very different. Maybe you've been told that your child can't keep up so they can't be included, or maybe they are included for 30 minutes a day. Maybe academic goals are off the table because they need to learn life skills, or maybe you've heard that they'd be more comfortable with people like them.

Today is about unpacking all of that. So how can we push back against narratives that have long been normalized despite the fact they are not based in law or best practices or research, and if your kid is allowed into Gen Ed, what happens if it's not going so well or the team doesn't really know how to make it work? Is the district's answer to take them out. So we need to talk about the right supports, and thankfully, we have just the person to walk us through all of this and more, non attorney, education advocate and founder of plan for inclusion, not to mention content specialist and writer for undivided Karen Ford Cole, Karen's practice focuses on inclusion, and she's also the parent of a young man with disabilities, so she is deep in the trenches with us in so many ways. Welcome, Karen. We are thrilled to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And before we jump in, I want to quickly share something that we built at undivided that ties directly into what we're talking about today. A lot of what we'll cover comes down to what's written in the IEP. Are our kids getting what they need, and so often, even when we think that our IEP is solid, the gaps aren't always easy to spot. So we created the IEP assistant. You can upload your child's IEP and in about five minutes, it gives you personalized recommendations on where supports, accommodations, goals or services might be unclear, absent completely or lacking. It is an informed second set of eyes. Have you ever wondered if you're missing something in your child's IEP? Because I know, I know I have every single year, all the time, so we want to help, and the undivided platform is HIPAA compliant, because we value your child's privacy like our own, you don't have to worry about their information going anywhere. So even better, if you need one to one support, you'll also have access to a navigator who can help you determine next steps. So you see that QR code in the corner of your screen. You can scan that link and read more about the IEP assistant and how it can transform the way that you prep for your child's IEP, our community manager, Donna, she's also in the chat with you. She'll share the link in the chat where you can find out more. Donna will also be sharing lots of article links where you can dive deeper into what Karen will be discussing today. And as usual, we have way too much to cover in an hour. So let's talk about one of our favorite topics, inclusion.

So, all right, Karen, inclusion can mean a lot of things to different people, right? You ask one person, they say one thing. You ask somebody else, they say something different. So we hear about inclusion or mainstreaming, pushing in. So how do you define inclusive education? I think a lot of the time we talk a lot about placement, which classroom they're in, and I do think that is a very important part. Without that presence, it's not inclusion, so that the place the child should be is the classroom that they would be. And if they didn't have an IEP. So if you that's your home school, or if you have school of choice, if it's a charter school, if you were going to homeschool your kids anyway, that is the place where your child would be educated if they were not, if they didn't have a disability and didn't have an IEP. But the second part of it, which I think is more important for me, I see inclusion as not that placement, but the process that the educators go through thinking about how to make that environment work for every kid in that environment. So that process of looking at what's missing, what's stopping that from participating in the learning environment and adding services and support, that's a bit I call inclusion, absolutely.

So how do you define I think it's important, because we hear this very interchangeably. So how do you define mainstreaming, the mainstreaming is where the child is seen as belonging in a separate place, not that classroom. And so they're a special education tool, and they visit general education classroom, maybe, or PE, they might never actually get into the actual classroom, right? They might go to a library for library time, so they spend time in the mainstream of the school, but there's no attempt to create a longing for them to be part of that learning community.

Absolutely, because thank you for the distinction, because I think a lot of people and a lot of schools define inclusion as what you just described as mainstreaming. So Karen, can you give us a picture of inclusion done right? What? What does that look like?

I think when it's done right, it actually does feel very left natural. Look very naturally. See, what does it look like? I always think of I went on a visit to chime, which is here in LA a school, that it's a charter school that is set up as a model school to show people how inclusion works. So it's full inclusion model. And when I went on the tour, what struck me was I couldn't tell which kids needed to be included? Like, yeah, sure, you could see all this kid had an AAC device, or this kid, you know, is a wheelchair user or so on. But apart from that, I couldn't really tell which kids had the disability. And yet, I know they have a lot of kids with disabilities at that school, so I think that that's the first thing. It should look very natural. Secondly, the the children are working together. The children are doing a lot of the including in a in a first grade, second grade classroom. If you go in, you'll see the kids are doing a lot of things as groups. They're helping each other. They're reminding each other the rules, and they're they're working together, and that's a lot of what we try and teach kids to do in schools nowadays. They're not sitting on desks in rows like we did when we were children, right? They should be. They are working together, and they're helping each other, and we're teaching them how to work together. So in an inclusive classroom, it's not just that we are making sure that the kids with disabilities have the services and supports they need to make that work, but also teaching the kids without disabilities how to work with people who might need something different.

So give us a picture on the other side of the spectrum of how inclusion is routinely done.

So the thing I see very often is that the student is just working all day with the aid they're what we call an island in the mainstream, right? So they're in the general ed classroom, but they're really creating a classroom just with themselves and the aid is the teacher and and they're not really in interacting with the other children. I often see children being mainstreamed at times where there is no opportunity for interaction, which, you know, it's very difficult to see what the point of that is. The child often has no meaningful access to the curriculum. They're presented with textbooks that they can't read. And, you know, they're not expected to do these activities. Sometimes the aid is doing all the work for them, just going through the motions. The aid is doing the work that the other children are doing, as though the objective was to produce the work, rather than that being part of the learning process, and the child's just sitting there doing nothing and watching it grown. Do the work for them that doesn't teach them much, other than they are not able to do it absolutely, which I think a lot of the things that you've touched on are things that you know. Again, parents hear that this is what inclusion is. So Karen, what is one of the biggest myths that parents believe about inclusion that isn't true?

Well, there's sort of two. This is the sort of has a double edge, right? The first is that a lot of parents think that the student has to be on grade level, and their kid isn't on grade level, so there's nothing they can get out of being in a classroom where that grade level is being taught. And I don't think that's true at all. I think that a child can get a lot out of it if the teachers are able to, you know, think about adapting what that lesson is, what that content is, to the objectives that they're supposed to be learning, their IEP goals, or the essential understandings which They're able to target. But on the other hand, that same belief, I often see parents and teachers who believe that. They say it's just about socialization. We just want them to be here so they learn to socialize with other kids. Well, if I wanted to teach a kid how to socialize with them, I would not put them in a ninth grade algebra class. It's not a great place for social interaction, right? So what we have to remember is that inclusion is about inclusive education. That the research shows that children learn better when they're learning with other typical peers, not when they're learning next to them and socializing with them, right? And we are going to talk about because I know you're not saying socialization isn't important, but that shouldn't be the reason they're just sitting in classrooms. And so we definitely we're going to talk about both of these things, because those are both two common myths that we hear over and over. And so let's just dive straight into some of the most common reasons that we hear from districts on why our kids can't be included with their non disabled peers, right? So such as, your child isn't ready for inclusion yet. They need that smaller class. They can work on skills in their special day class first, and they'll like being around peers like them, and we'll see when and if they're ready for Gen Ed. So number one, is that a valid suggestion?

Well, the research having students with extensive support needs in separate classes doesn't support the idea that your child is going to catch up in that extensive support needs classroom, separate classrooms are less likely to have evidence based literacy instruction, when based on the studies, then typically, students that in separate classrooms tend to have easier IEP goals, and they're less likely to Meet them, and there's very little exposure to grade level content. So how they're going to catch up in that classroom is really a mystery to me, so I don't there may be benefits to being in that classroom, but the benefits are not that they're likely to catch up with the other students in in an extensive support needs classroom. So really, this is where we we have this mantra, you know, you can't learn to swim unless you can't learn to swim in the parking lot of the pool, right? You have to get wet. And if the child isn't ready, we have to look at what ready means. Ask the school, what is the what is the bar, what is the standards of readiness that you're looking at? And how can we teach the child those particular skills? And the best place to teach them is in context, because children learn best in context. So if we put them in that context and then teach them there, that's the best way for them to catch up and be ready.

So how can a parent respond if their district says that their child isn't ready for inclusion, because you just laid out why that isn't true, but so how can a parent respond?

Probably the best response is to ask for the district policy that lists the test for readiness right? A lot of districts might have a readiness for kindergarten sheet, but it's a guideline. It's not saying you can't go to kindergarten unless you are ready, right? And children who don't have IEPs aren't told this. They are just placed in kindergarten. So, you know, ask the district, where is that policy in writing? And you'll find that it isn't. In writing, because it doesn't exist, right?

And we can't say this enough, so many times, you know when you're hearing that this is a policy, right? It's just how maybe it's always been done. So just keep repeating those words in your head that Karen just said, always ask for the policy so you can read it yourself. So Karen, if a parent does agree for their children to start in a special day class or a specialized class to see how it goes, can it hurt their chances of getting an inclusive placement later?

Yes, it is a lot easier. If you're at the beginning of this process and you haven't already signed an IEP, agreeing to a separate classroom. Because the way that the Individuals with Disabilities Act, idea works, the way that framework works, it's like the default position is that your child should be in the what they call the regular classroom, the classroom they would be in if they weren't disabled, right? So that's the word the law uses regular and so once you've agreed to do that, it's harder to get back in. If you're in that situation where you haven't agreed that yet, you can often use stay put. That is one of the tools we use. The parents can say, I don't agree, and their child will have to stay in the current placement. So you have that stay put, whereas once you have agreed to a separate classroom, it's very difficult to get back in. You really have to get the school district to agree to place your child in a general education classroom if they don't have an aid in that separate setting, because they don't need one in the separate setting, but they would need one in the in the general ed classroom. Often, the school district will make you wait two months while they assess for an aid, and the chance can have to be in the classroom without the aid during that time, you don't have to do that. You can request that they do a diagnostic placement, where they place them, and then have the testing for the aid, the assessment for the aid while they're there, right? So there's all sorts of ways you can get around that, but still, it is a lot easier if you just say no in the first place. Got it. So another thing that you already sort of touched on, that we hear all the time, what if your child is denied because they're significantly behind and they can't keep up in a gen ed class? Because many parents feel like this is a sensible argument, because their child could be many grade levels behind where there is no closing the gap. So what do you want to say to those families?

So there are children, often children with specific learning disabilities that need a very particular intervention. Think of a child with auditory processing difficulties, right? And they can have an auditory processing intervention, and all of a sudden they're able to learn everything, right? So that might only take a year of being pulled out for that very specific intervention. It's very little time that they're missing from the classroom. Dyslexia is another one where they might go out the classroom to do an Orton Gillingham program, and that enables them to read. And that, oh, that's that skill of reading is so pivotal that it opens up all their other learning, right? So there is that argument there for taking the child out for a very specific evidence based intervention, which then opens up all the other learning in the general ed classroom, and the child can return to full time in general education, those children aren't usually in a separate classroom all day long. They're usually just for taken out for a specific amount of time for that intervention. But with children with extensive support needs, they're often placed in classrooms where there isn't any evidence based interventions happening, where there's less structured literacy intervention, and so being behind in those things. It isn't. They're still going to be behind. They're going to get even more behind. Based on the research. I know often I hear from parents, well, we have an amazing SDC classroom, and I'm so happy for those families that they have an amazing SDC classroom. I still think a lot of the research was done on classrooms where the school volunteered to show how great a program they had. And still, when we looked at the the the research shows that the students are making less progress. Progress in that environment, because the expectations are lower, right?

So bottom line, your child does not have to keep up to be in general education, right? Special Education is about giving them the supports and the services that will make them successful, and it doesn't have to look exactly like what everyone's doing, and we'll talk more about that too, but that's the bottom line that we want parents to hear, because that's something that is a huge misconception, and similar to that, Karen, what can we say to an IEP team that says if our child needs modifications, they have to be in a separate special education classroom?

Well, that one I kind of love because there is specific wording. So, I mean the short answer is, idea is the Individuals with Disabilities, Education Act, Section 300.116 placements, Section E, right? But so I'm not an attorney, right? And I have to be very careful not to tell anyone what the law says or how to interpret the law, because that's not my role. But you know, there are places where it's just written in black and white, so the way I would deal with this in an IEP is to ask them, Well, you know, there is this one section of idea, and it says these words, can you help me understand how that is consistent with your saying that this child can't be included because of modifications. But here's the thing, I might be careful not to say that my goal might be just to get them to put it in writing, because this is such a gift to your attorney. I feel like if I, if I point out to them the inconsistency, if we're already preparing to to to go to an attorney, if that's where we're at in the kind of feel of this IEP, right? Then they're gonna come up with some other excuse, which might be harder to, you know, to argue later, right? So in a way, like maybe I just try and get them to put it in writing, right? Don't let someone say that to you. Make sure they put it in the IEP, or later on, they could create a prior written notice they need to put it in writing. So you could show that is their reasoning, because it's not a good reason. So if you hear it in an IEP, Karen, do we just say, Great, can you make sure that that goes in the notes?

Yeah, yeah, all right. Or sometimes they don't say it that blatantly, right? And what you want to do is say, Well, I just want to make sure I'm understanding. Is what you're saying, that the reason my child can't be included is because they need modifications. And then when they say, yeah, exactly, then say, Oh, well, let's write that in the notes. Thanks so much for the clarification. All right, so here, here's another favorite. What about a school that says they aren't set up for inclusion, or that they don't do inclusion?

Well, yeah, they, I mean, try and get them to put it in writing, because that, again, that there is, there is no, I mean, there's no, this school is allowed to put you in a different location, right? There is a, there is a kind of you should be at your home school, the school you would go to if you didn't have an IEP, right? But if the school says, well, we don't do inclusion here. You know that's not an okay, but they might say, but our other Middle School has an inclusion program, right? Well, inclusion doesn't have to be a program, but unless you have really great relationships with those middle school students from being included in elementary school or some other reason why you want to keep local, I would take the inclusion program, right, just because it is a whole lot better than fighting and fighting for a long time, right? But no, the school has to do inclusion. That's what the IDEA says is the purpose of special education is to give the student access to a general education. Curriculum and environment, right?

So it's not a thing. And like Karen said, you know, go to her. So if they're, if they're saying, you know, we don't do inclusion, but this other school does. Maybe you go to the other school and it's amazing, and it's worth it, right? But if it isn't, and you want to be at your home school, then the we don't do inclusion is not something again, you want to check it out, because it might be that 30 minutes in the library, exactly, which is a great point, Karen. And I think one of the most important points to remember about inclusion is that it doesn't have to be all or nothing, right? Your child doesn't have to be in gen ed for every minute of the day. And if your child is in a special ed class. They don't have to be in there all day, but that's often not what parents hear. So what do parents need to know when talking about placement? So the research that we have on inclusion, and we have a lot of a huge amount, 50 years worth of research that says, you know, children being included have better outcomes. They're more likely to have a job, they're more like to keep that job, they're more likely to have a diploma, they're more likely to be able to read and write, and all of these other outcomes that we've studied and found that they work better in an inclusive environment. Those studies were not done on 30 minutes visiting right? Those studies were done usually on students being what we call fully included, which would be like 80% of the day, at least in a general education environment. So, you know, when we're looking at something in between, which is very often what children with extensive support needs end up with, there are situations especially, you know, I know we've got people from many states, and in some states, they let you have services outside of the school day, and in that situation, well, you could really maximize your time in general education, but there may be some services that your child needs that aren't really appropriate in a general ed setting, and You might have to have that as pull out, right? And that's going to be a balance with any kid in any IEP, but you want to always ask, like, what are they missing when they're not in that when they're not in the general ed classroom? How can we make up that missing access to the curriculum? You know, but we do have some really nice mix and matches, you know, especially in the secondary schools, where you could maybe be in a class for math that had that was, was all children with IEPs, and maybe had a lot of support, maybe had a slightly modified curriculum, but it doesn't need to be right? It also sometimes you find that those classrooms really aren't teaching much math at all, and you might be better to be in a co taught classroom where they have the general education math class, math curriculum, but your student is working on something related connected by the core content connector, right? So you have, we have these core content connectors, which are part of this, the standards that we have in the Common Core and those enable a teacher as an education specialist to modify the curriculum within a general education context, so you don't have to have a completely separate curriculum and a separate class just to be doing different work, right? But you want to think if you are doing that mix and match thing, you want to think about what classes your student needs in. We see all the time students are in PE, Gen, Ed, PE. PE might be the worst class to be in, especially if you've got a physical disability. You can't get changed on your own. You know, the room is super, loud, and has a lot of students in it, and there's a lot of bad behavior going on from general education students in PE classes, I can tell you, well, Karen, I think you just you hit on the most important part, right? Everything that you just said comes down to individualized right? What is right for your child? What is your child telling you? When is it too much right? And we always want to go back and look at the why right. Why you know? Why are they telling us? Why? How are they showing us that this might not be right? Is it the services and supports? Do we need to do that? But it doesn't have to be, because sometimes I hear that parents. Are almost threatened with, well, if you want to do that, then this is what it's going to be or, you know, if you don't want to do that, then sorry, they can't be taken out. So just remember the high and IEP and figure out, you know, what is right for your child. And that can be harder when there are behavior challenges, right? Because some of the biggest pushback that we hear, and that you see, I'm sure, all the time, is when children need higher amounts of behavior support, and that that was by far the most frequently asked question that came in with RSVPs for today's event. So first, Karen, is there any gray area about least restrictive environment and behavior? She's for me, it's one of the areas that's least gray. Is written in black and white. Again, 34 CFR, 305, 3o, f, if you like, correct. And again, I'm not an attorney. I can't tell you how to understand the law, but it's very clear that if a student is being removed from a general ed classroom because of their behavior, the school should be doing an FBA, which is a functional behavior assessment. They should be looking at why the student is behaving that way and how that's related to their disability, and then coming up with a plan to have a behavior intervention plan or behavior supports that is going to help that student behave appropriately. And so anytime that a student's learning is impeding their learning, but also the learning of the other children in the class that should be happening the FBA. And yes, it can take 60 days, but you can do it a lot faster if you need to, right? But you know that needs to be happening, you want to have a trained behaviorist or a psychologist, an ED specialist can do it, but it's a lot better to have someone trained in psychology to do a behavior, a functional behavior assessment and come up with the reasons why the child's behaving that way off. Very often, behavior is communication, right? We always say that behavior is communicating. So what's your child communicating? I think a lot of the time, the child is communicating that this is too hard, that this is too difficult, and they can see that they haven't got the skills that the other kids in that class have to participate, right? So sometimes the answer to that behavior plan, the answer isn't just let's do a sticker chart and give them rewards if they behave nicely. The answer is actually to change the situation that made them behave badly in the first place, which was them not having work that they could feel successful at, right? So there's where that inclusion work comes in. The Ed specialist needs to work on making sure that the student has something that they can be doing in that class that fits in with what the rest of the classes but is also something that they can they can win at, right? They need to feel good about themselves. They need to feel winners. They need they can't feel all the time like I can't do this right? Or what is the point of this lady next to me writing down all of this stuff which I can't even read, and that they're going to be bored like any of us would be bored if we were sitting in a classroom where there was a foreign language, but we had someone with us to write down everything that was said in that foreign language. I think we would all be badly begged in that situation, right, right, yeah. And Laura just asked a question, which, you know, what is a reasonable time on whether a one on one aid works or doesn't work for your child, because that's obviously a common support that comes up when we talk about behavior.

So a lot of districts want to do an assessment. In California, we often call it a Skia CIA assessment, and to try and find out if they need it or not. I less often have the situation where they said, Oh, we think we should take the aid away, because that doesn't work for them. But there are always, you know, you have to look a little more deeply at AIDS. What kind of aid Do you have? Do you have a behavioral aid that's trained in in behavior? Do you have an instructional aid that actually knows how to support someone who is using an AAC device, or who might not be writing, you might be using some at supports, like clicker, for example, for writing. And is the aid trained in? Using that with a child, right? So it's not just whether the aid is working. It's like, let's see if we can make that aid work better by giving them training and support. And I wish they could just always be included in the IEP team, because then they might understand what it is they're supposed to be doing with the kid?

Yeah, exactly. And I know I probably seem repetitive, but I just want to really underscore for families, you know, who might be thinking, Well, what about my kid? So, Karen, what about diagnosis specific rejections? Right? Like intellectual disabilities, autism, medical complexity, AAC users, right? Can they be denied a gen ed setting based on diagnosis?

Nope, yep. So just want everyone to hear that loud and clear, because, again, that's something that we hear every day, so that's a big no. So let's talk about, we talked a lot about sort of what we hear and how parents can, you know, push back, you know, if they're hearing or how they can, you know, respond in that IEP to if their child can't be included. But let's talk about how to make inclusion work. So what are some of the most important supports, services, accommodations or modifications that you have seen help students in inclusive environments.

I think you want to look at communication. I'll give you some examples, but you also want to look at engagement, and you want to look at peer interactions, right? So communication, there's two parts to it, right? How is the instruction being communicated to the child. And that might be, can they read the book that everyone is told to read? Can they follow along the lecture that the teacher is giving, right? And then the other part of that is, Can they communicate what they know Right? That's a big problem with a lot of our ESN children, is, you know, the parents will say, Well, everyone says they're really quite smart when they're working with them, but when we're doing testing, it doesn't show up, and it's because the child can't communicate what they know, right? And so good examples of things are like adaptive texts that they you can you can get great adapted texts from teachers, pay teachers. My son had a fantastic one for the outsiders novel, right? So he was in a eighth grade classroom with all his friends doing the outsiders novel. They had to read a different chapter, and then talk about it, right? And it's really about the themes. He watched the movie maybe seven or eight times. We had to watch the movie a lot, right? And he used to go around saying to everyone, stay gold. Stay gold, right?

We were traumatized from Johnny getting burned for a long time for that, you know, he could get into that novel, and he could follow along and participate.

He had an adaptive text which was just downloaded from teachers, paid teachers for a minimal amount of money, which had just broken it down into three or four very basic sentences in a picture, right? So he could read it, he could participate in the act of reading the book, right? But we he also listened to the book on the audio, and he watched the movie. So he had multiple ways of accessing this novel, and he got into talking about it with the other students, which is really what the class is about, right? And so he was participating. So that's an example of where, you know, putting in multiple ways of accessing the material can really open up a middle school or high school class to a kid, I think, that you know, in terms of showing his writing, what we used a lot with my son was Google slideshows, because of the kids, other kids were doing, submitting work on on their Chromebook right, and they were writing maybe two or three page essays, and he would have a slideshow where the teacher had asked a question and he had to just plunk him, you know, a phrase or or a sentence, and then a photograph he found on the internet that matched the question, right? And so, yeah, he couldn't write a three or four page essay, but he could get into the topic, and he could show and he was learning the skill of making a slideshow presentation, which we've used a lot in adult life as well, right? If he has to tell someone about himself, he knows how to follow a slideshow and present it right. And then engagement. You want to look at using their interests, you know, their favorite characters. Maybe it's kind of great if they're age appropriate. And you can use something like Star Wars. Or something, right? Focus on the more age appropriate ones. But you know, you can drop that into a lot of materials and then peer interactions, right? So focusing on how they're going to interact with their peers. If they're working in group they're doing group work, because a lot of middle school is group work, right? How can we think about what their role in the group can be, and supporting the other students in figuring that out? I have one family where the student is her goal is to use a calculator, but going around the classroom, checking the other kids work with her calculator, right? So she's interacting, and she's in quite a powerful position, because she's going to check their work, right? So thinking about that peer interaction and how that's going to, you know, put them in a good position to be developing skills.

Those are incredible, incredible examples. One problem, right how a lot of districts don't have a lot of experience with inclusion, or, you know, because they don't have the training around the best practices, you know, of inclusion. So they may think that they, you know, they've tried inclusion in the past, and they deem that it wasn't successful, right? So when I say there is one problem, that problem being you have this knowledge, Karen, but a lot of districts don't. So what is one of the most important tools that parents can use to help districts figure out what they need to do.

Well, there's a lot of power dynamics in an IEP like that, right? Even if I'm there as an advocate, I haven't got an education degree, so you know, why should the teacher listen to my ideas? Right? But at the end of the day, the parent is the person who knows their kid best, right? I think one of the best tools we have is it, called it, I call it an inclusion report, or a participation and access report. And we have an article about that from undivided and there's samples of a report like that on the evolve and effect website, because the problem is, this is a great tool, but a lot of schools will have no idea what you're talking about, right? So you kind of have to say, what I want is a report that is an observation and assessment of the environment. So it's ecological in nature. Is the technical sciency term, right? You're looking at the environment, the learning environment that kids in, not at the kids ability, not readiness, right? But the and we're focusing on their access and participation in the general education curriculum. So if you can get an education specialist to do that, that's fantastic. If you can get them to hire an outsider who's an inclusion specialist, or your district has an inclusion specialist, or someone who thinks that they're an inclusion specialist, I think that's even better, because it really helps if someone has something. But even just having that observation and going through it in the IEP and saying, Well, you know, okay, so that's where there was a participation blockage, let's just brainstorm and figure out what we could do. What what do we have here in our toolbox that we can get them past that and and enable them that participation, right? Because the report is really saying, okay, these are the places that are really blocking her. Oh, this child can't read the materials that we we have in the classroom. Or let's have the aid read them to them, but then, like they've got the aid and the eight has to go to the back of the room so the other kids can't hear them reading it aloud, right? So, oh, I know. Let's put headphones on and have them do text to speech from a computer so that the child is able to learn to do that by themselves and not depend on an adult to do it. And they don't have to be separated because they have headphones, right?

And you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, this can look very different depending on what age, right? So let's start with elementary what is one of the biggest barriers for elementary inclusion and what supports can parents request to overcome it.

Think what I see a lot in elementary is that the child with a disability is often passive and not the agent. And a lot of what we're training kids in elementary school to do is to be the agent right, to be able to look after themselves a bit, right and following. Instructions without having to be prompted 300 times. But our children have AIDS, so they have to be prompted 300 times. So, you know, they should, we should think about how we're promoting their agency and self determination, right, right at this elementary aid. So we talk a lot about fading the age, right? But I don't mean the aid going away at all. What I mean is the aid being trained to think about, what does this child not need me to do, right? And what sometimes they have to have an aid there for safety. The kid might run away, or the kid might have a seizure, right? Their aid needs to be an arm's length, right? But they don't have to do everything for them, and that has to be constantly reassessed every single day. I remember my son was in kindergarten, and he could put the straw in the juice box. We worked ages on on that skill, and then he went to an es y in a in a separate setting. And after that, he just would look at me like, for the juice box, like, Well, come on, lady. And I realized that in that setting, they had just automatically put the straws in the juice boxes for all the kids, because that's what they expected, right? So it's an example of how low expectations often is part of that aid culture. And I think you have we need to train the aids to not think that way, but to think about themselves as an independence facilitator, right? My goal is for this child to do everything themselves and anything they can do themselves I shouldn't do, and I tried to follow that at home as well. But it's hard as a parent to do it right, but getting them to do classroom jobs like asking the gen ed teacher, do you think you could ask her to do a classroom job like wipe the whiteboard right carrying their own stuff, which is hard because sometimes our kids have two iPads and a Chromebook, and then, you know, and things like finding the right page in the book, even if they have their own adapted text, they should still find page 62 in the in the main textbook, right? Because it's good practice to find the page number. And I want, I always tried to flip it a little bit right. So we have, we want to teach them independence, right? I need help. We teach we have IEP goals that say that to ask for help, but we never have IEP goals that say I'm going to ask someone else if they need help, and I'm going to help them, right? That's the power dynamic, right? So we always want to, we don't want to just say the IEP goal is for them to answer questions. They're going to understand questions better if they get practice at asking questions. So just flipping it around a little bit sometimes means that we're more focused on that agency part.

I love that. I love that, Karen, I mean everything you said is hits home to me, also having a 16 year old and looking back and it's really about building those skills. And again, comes back to supporting staff, so they know how to do that, too. And another thing that we hear a lot, what about kids who start off doing great, but then the work becomes more challenging each year, and the school might suggest that it's time to put them in a specialized class, right? How can parents respond?

Well, it does become more challenging because of the missing skills, right? But that's where we can fill in with technology, right? So, oh, they can't read, and it's we're past third grade, so they're not teaching them to read anymore, right? But that's where we have we're still going to teach them to read, right? But at the same time, we want to use other ways of access technology, to access written materials in different ways, right? And but you know, it does in some ways, it becomes easier, right? Because it is no longer about being able to learn to read the when you know, when you're in eighth grade. It's about talking about the themes and the characters in outside is not about reading each word, right. And and our kids have opinions about characters, right? So in some ways, you know, just because you're missing those skills doesn't mean that you can't do the latest stuff. And I think, I think that, especially with math, right? A lot of what math is at a higher level is solving problems, and we think that they can't do that because they cannot remember the sequence one to 20 in their head long enough to say those numbers out loud, right? So give them a number chart. They. Number line. They've always got those numbers available to them. They never have to say them in order, and remember that order off by heart. But might still think about how they can solve a problem, you know, using numbers Absolutely.

And you know, you've kind of touched on on secondary. Is there anything else that you want to say about secondary, about really making it meaningful? Because I think that schools feel especially daunted, right, as those kids are getting older, as things are getting harder, because those gaps become even wider, you know, like you were saying so. Is there anything else that you want to say about how to make secondary meaningful and inclusive environments, you know, for parents and for schools.

So I do think it's important that they're included in academic classes and that they've got work that matches what the other kids are doing, but at their own level, but at the same time, I think nobody ever said, Oh, the best thing about high school was our algebra class, right? Who did you ever hear say that? Right? No program. Or it was their running club, or what you know it was. That's what the kids enjoy about high school, right? And so we want to make sure that they're fully involved in those sports and activities. That's where you make friends and relationships, even relationships with teachers, right? How many people their favorite teacher was their English teacher, but because they were running the sub debate club or something like that, right? So we want to identify what our children might enjoy in terms of clubs. We don't want to limit them to friendship clubs. What you need? Remember, Mary Falvey says it great on one of our videos, you need proximity and you need a shared interest to have a friendship, right? You need the two, right? And just because you're sitting next to someone in math, they don't become your friend. If you have a shared interest, and you engage in that shared interest in a club, then, yes, you're going to get to be friends. But I also think that the peers in high school, it isn't automatic. They don't automatically know how to support other children with with a disability, so they need structured support to do that, to engage in that friendship. They need some help. They need to be able to ask questions. Say, Well, how do I do this when she has this disability? Right? Absolutely, and I guess it's also an important question to ask, like, is it ever too late for a child to be included? Karen, because that's another thing.

No, we have, we have students who are going to university programs for students with intellectual disabilities who have not been included up till then. I think it does work better when they've already been included, but yeah, you it's never too late. You can still get access and inclusive education at any age.

And what about I think it's important to ask, because this is, again, something that we hear a lot. What about a student who isn't making progress, or they aren't meeting their goals? Is that a valid reason to be removed from Gen Ed?

They don't need to meet their goals. They need to make progress. That it that is, would be the test, really, is it? Are they making progress? But it doesn't need to be the most progress, right? Interestingly enough, if there's a child who's making a lot of progress in the separate setting, that isn't a good reason to move them to more of that separate setting, that because that, that social interaction that has a benefit of its own that outweighs that. So you just need to make some progress, any progress you know, which is why it's so important to look at your goals and make sure that the baselines have a number in them, because you don't want them to say, Oh, they didn't make any progress when they did. You want to be able to objectively answer the question, did they make progress? Well? And that's a great point about goals, too, Karen, because I know there's ways, and we do have an article I think we're going to share about that. How can we write inclusion into our IEP goals. So it also is not just something that people are talking about, but it is ingrained within this document that is a legal document that needs to be fulfilled. I keep coming back to Mary Falvey. She's just such a great, great influence on me. But she said. Just get them to put the word with a peer into the goal. And I do try to do that very often, if I can, but if I can't do that, basically I'm checking to see if this is something that would be something it doesn't need to be a skill they're working on in a general ed classroom, but it needs to be something that would happen in a general ed classroom, right? I had a little guy the other day that had a goal that was to feed a doll. And this was okay, because he was going into a kindergarten classroom, right? And I think so I asked the general teacher in the IEP, do you have dolls in your classroom? If it had been a fourth grade classroom? She said, No, we don't have any dolls, right? So it wouldn't have been a suitable IEP goal for that, for that environment, right? And we're, we're talking about what could be, you know, it's a lot of work. We always talk about, like, inclusion is a lot of work, especially when, and I don't mean that that's not as an excuse, right? But if schools haven't done it, and they haven't done it around best practices, it's a lot to get started. But Karen, how can parents deal with districts who are extremely resistant to inclusion but have agreed to try it? But how can we work with those who are uncomfortable teaching our kids?

I do think the best thing is to develop a working relationship with your IEP team, with your district administrators, share resources and to have some empathy for them, right? Because very often this does seem like too much work for them, right? And if you think about sometimes, what you're asking it is a lot of work to be on one person. Inclusion is meant to be done collaboratively by a team. If it's all put on one person, it's too much, right? And their district needs to give the staff time to do that collaboration. Do they have built into their schedule, a collaboration time, or is that happening on their own time? Right? Their family time, right? Give them resources. There's a fantastic resource on the ties Center website, T i e, s Center website called 515, 45 and that's a great way for them to learn how to collaborate as a team. Also get involved in whatever your school district has in terms of where families can work on systemic advocacy for inclusion, if you have maybe a district advisory committee where parents get to give input and share resources with them, tell them about different programs that might be at the state or a conference, you know, invite your teacher to conference and buy them a book. Instead of buying teacher gifts, buy them a book. I just put one on my list. I saw a new book out, and I was like, All right, that's my teacher gift for the year, right?

Karen and I, that's what we do. We give. And I was just telling Karen, I said, and I always write something, and I'm like, the gift you never wanted. I mean, every time we get new cabinet members, new superintendents, there are books specifically written for how admin can start this. You know, there's things for teachers. There's books specific to teachers, so there's a lot of great resources out there. And remember, you can always ask for trainings too within your IEP. So obviously your IEP is about supporting your child, but you know, it's very hard to do if we're not supporting staff. So like Karen said, you know, find your allies and share those resources. You might be surprised. You know who grabs on to those and, you know, I know it's about time to wrap up. So I do have one more question, Karen, because I think this is the biggest thing, the underlying issue for a lot of parents, because the sad reality is that for the least included students, right ones with higher support needs or behavioral needs or intellectual disability, we often have to be prepared for our child to be the guinea pig, and that's not easy, and it probably won't be right anytime soon, maybe ever right, which can feel like a very valid reason for parents to not push for inclusion. So what do you want to say to parents who are reluctant because there's literally nothing in place to get started.

I think, from my own experience, I went through years like that, where I felt like, you know, we were so much the guinea pig that it would be better just to give in and go with something that they wanted to do right. Whenever I did that, I found out it wasn't very good, like it wasn't what they promised, right? So just because this is the way they've always done it doesn't mean it's going to live up to the expectations, right? So you know, again, you you have to learn to swim in the park. Parking lot. So if you want your child to learn what it is, you can't swim in the parking lot.

Get it all mixed up. I'm sorry. You can't learn to swim in the parking lot of the poor, right? You have to get wet. You have to take a risk. That's what that phrase is about. If you don't want to drown, right? Never get in a pool. But guess what? You won't learn to swim, and then if you accidentally fall in the water, you're going to drown because you didn't learn to swim, because you were scared to get wet in case you drowned. Right? That's the dilemma of being a parent, whether your child has a extensive support needs or not. At some point we have to let them we have to expose them to the risk of failure. Otherwise, you know, otherwise they never get the chance to really soar and show us what they can do. We have to presume competence all the time, right? So, you know, what is the alternative? The alternative is to not try, right? And, you know, I understand why people choose that, because it's hard to be fighting all the time. What I can say is, you know, definitely by the end of, by 11th grade, we weren't fighting anymore. The district had kind of, you know, got the point, right? So, and we weren't fighting, and we fighting seems like a bad word. We weren't. We were we were going back and forth, and we were collaborative, and we were trying different things, right? And it was a long process. But yes, my child was the guinea pig, and then I know a lot of families afterwards who who have benefited from that. It doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you're the kid that you're the only kid that it works for.

But if you have that feeling in your gut that you know whether they're in a separate class, and you feel like it's really not what you want for them. They're not getting what they need. They're not getting what they should be getting, you know, whatever, whatever that reason, you know, or they're there, and it's not quite working, you know, just you know, you follow that gut and you work with your team, and it isn't easy, but you know you are. You're probably working really hard all the time trying to get them what they need, maybe in a situation that isn't built for them. So, you know, it's, it's never going to be easy, no matter, no matter where they are. So, you know, you, like Karen said, sometimes you just have to jump in. We probably, yeah, we should, probably shouldn't use fighting words, right? I think that that's one mistake we make as parents is we quite often talk about people being inclusion warriors and and we're, we're we're fighting for inclusion, and we should say we're advocating for inclusion, right? And because the reality is, even if you go to due process and get a lawyer to get your placement without that collaboration, and it has to the parent has to be part of the collaboration. It's not going to work. You have to have a team that's going to it might work better than being in a separate class. It's not going to work as well as it should without you collaborating with the team. And the team collaborating and they were quite often, the team, come back to you later and say, I'm so glad we did this. It was really meaningful to me as a teacher.

That's our hope. That's our hope for everyone, right? Oh, I mean, and we are unfortunately. I'm looking we are unfortunately out of time. Karen, I would love to talk to you all day about inclusion. I feel like we we do talk a little bit, if you're watching this and you want that same opportunity, Karen is going to be hosting office hours in a few weeks. So for undivided members, we have office hours with experts like Karen every week. You can show up for five minutes or the whole hour, and you can ask your biggest questions directly. I know Karen, and I would love to meet you and say hello, so you can check out the links on your screen and that QR code or in the chat to get started. But for today, just remember Karen's words, right? Your kid doesn't need to earn their way into general education. They don't have to be at grade level. They can't be segregated based on diagnosis alone. There are strength based accommodations and modifications that support the majority of students in Gen Ed, because if, if it's not working, the question isn't whether they belong, it's whether the system is doing its job. And we shouldn't have to fight for our kids to be educated, but we do. We shouldn't have to hire attorneys so they can learn alongside their peers, but we do, and staff shouldn't have to guess. How they can support our kids. They should get training and have systemic support in place, but too often, they're left to figure it out on their own. So they do. So we will keep pushing until inclusion is not an exception, and public education lives up to its promise for its students and its staff.

So for an even deeper dive, because Karen and I literally could talk about this days upon months upon years on end. So we're going to dive even deeper. So join us for our next event, where we're actually going to be talking to Dr Diana Fannin, a former special education director and founder of disability Ed pros, will talk more in detail about how every IEP can be tied to the standards, what that looks like in your child's IEP, and in practice, the limitations of alternate curriculum, how co teaching can work, even with budget deficits looming and much more so Donna will share the RSVP information in the chat that is April 9 at noon pacific time, right here on our Facebook page. And don't forget, if you want a second set of eyes on your child's IEP. Our IEP assistant can help you review that overwhelming document before you walk in to that meeting. And if you have more questions, you can talk them through with a navigator, and then you can talk to Karen or other education experts during office hours, all of that for the price of a cup of coffee. So just scan the QR code on your screen and get started. In the meantime, stay connected with us. Please. Donna will share our socials in the chat. We will keep you updated on the most important information your family needs to know about, IEPs, public benefits and legislative changes that affect our community, our children's supports and their rights. Karen is our legislative Wiz, and she is on it. So thank you again to Karen for talking with us today, and to all of you for being here. Our mission is to support you so your children can thrive, and we want you to thrive too. We'll see you soon. You.